Business Innovators Radio - Leo Quinn – The Marketing Implementer – On How To Use Birthday Marketing To Grow Your Business

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

In this episode, Nina Hershberger talks with Leo Quinn, a direct mail expert and the owner of Birthday Profit Systems. Leo shares his journey from being a finance major to running his own carpet cleaning business, and eventually becoming an entrepreneur specializing in email and birthday marketing.Leo has a unique approach to marketing, especially when it comes to birthdays. He believes that businesses of all kinds can benefit from implementing birthday marketing strategies. Whether it’s offering a free meal at a restaurant or a free bouquet of flowers at a florist, Leo emphasizes the importance of building a birthday list and using it to send personalized offers to customers on their special day.Leo shares several success stories from his clients who have implemented his birthday marketing strategies. From restaurants offering free chicken wings to chiropractors partnering with local businesses, these businesses have seen increased customer retention, word-of-mouth referrals, and overall growth in their revenue.If you’re interested in learning more about Leo Quinn and his birthday marketing strategies, you can visit his website at www.birthdayclubmanager.com or birthdayprofitsystems.com. He offers coaching and implementation services to businesses across the country.So, whether you’re a restaurant owner, a florist, or any other type of business owner, consider incorporating birthday marketing into your strategy. It’s a unique and effective way to engage with your customers, build customer loyalty, and ultimately grow your business.You can reach Leo at 518-288-8711 or by email at [e-mail] Radio with Nina Hershbergerhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/megabucks-radio-with-nina-hershbergerSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/leo-quinn-the-marketing-implementer-on-how-to-use-birthday-marketing-to-grow-your-business

Welcome to Megabox Radio. Conversations with successful entrepreneurs, sharing their tips and strategies for success, real-world ideas that can put Megabox in your bank account. Here's your host, Nina Hirshberger. Welcome to today's show. My name is Nina Hirshberger, and today I have a direct male expert, Leo Quinn, on my mic podcast today. Leo and I go back a long way, and I am probably more excited about this interview than I have been in many interviews, although I have some wonderful, wonderful guests. But let me give you a little background on Leo.

He's one of those guys who went to college, and I guess he didn't know what to do, so he decided he was going to get a bachelor's degree in finance. As he'll tell you in just a moment, he thought that meant you had to be a salesman selling insurance or a financial plan. or something, and he realized he wasn't into that. But one thing that we have in common is he met or he saw Jay Abraham's, what was a 15-page ad in Entrepreneur Magazine or Success Magazine back in 1990. I saw Jay's ad in 1994, so we have that in common. But he has gone on and he's become an entrepreneur. he has a really unique business so that we're going to talk about today.

So anyway, Leo, welcome to today's show. Thank you, Nina. It's great to be here. Tell me, okay, so was it Entrepreneur Magazine or was the Success Magazine that Jane Hag? Yeah, it could have been either one back in, I think he was advertising in both, but I think he had a deal with Entrepreneur Magazine if I remember the story correctly. Yeah, so did you go to any of his events or did you just? you know, as a high school, as a college senior, I certainly didn't have $15,000 to put down on it.

But I did have $2,000 available on an American Express card. And so I bought, you know, $2,000 worth of his stuff. So I have your marketing genius at work, and I have whatever the other big one was. And it was interesting because I do remember, they just arrived in a big cardboard box without any binders. And they just looked like somebody just felt sorry for me and just threw it all in a box and sent it to me. because it wasn't organized other than just being in a pile of papers with holes in them, so I had to get my own binders. But it was great to have it.

Well, you know, there's a lesson in just that. And the fact is good is good enough, the information that was in that box without a binder actually changed your life. Sure, absolutely. So sometimes we get so tight up and everything has to be perfect, or I would say, you know, for color. oftentimes doing the opposite, no four color, just black and white in a box, actually is better. Okay, so you graduated from college with a finance degree, and then it looks like you started a carpet cleaning business. Yeah, I graduated May of 91, and in May of 90, excuse me, and in January or February of 91, I saw an ad for Sears carpet cleaning. It said they would give you the equipment and the jobs, and you could use the equipment on your own.

own evenings and weekends to get your own customers. And that sounded like me being in my own business. So I worked for Sears for a few months. I was making $200 a week and spending $300 a week to get there. So I was losing money on the deal. But as a finance major, you can be proud of that. I took a vacation from that job that I was losing money and went down to Savannah, Georgia, or a cousin was graduating from high school. And there was an ad in the paper there for carpet cleaning. I always look at the newspapers whenever I travel. You never know when you're going to get a good idea. And there was a carpet cleaning company down there advertising $4.95 per room carpet cleaning. And Sears was charging $13 in room. So I called them up and I said, hey, I'm from New York.

How do you do that? And they said, well, we charge extra for the Scotch Guard and the deodorizer and all that? So I came back and I put an ad in my local newspaper, a very small daily paper called the Saratogian in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was a business card sized ad, three rooms, $7. 95 cents a room, three room minimum. So it's $23.85 and $85. And the next day, the ad ran, I was working for carpet cleaning in Hudson Falls, New York. I called my answering service, because that's what we had back then. They said I had 15 calls by 10.30 in the morning. Every little old lady in Saratoga was calling me because of the price point. So that was the last day I worked for Sears, gave them back their equipment, started working on my own that day.

Did you have equipment that you bought at that point? Yes, yeah, I did. I knew a carpet cleaning supplier company in Albany, and I just went there and I bought a machine, and I was on my own the next day. So obviously, you must have upsold them to make it profitable. Yeah, that was the idea. And this was, you know, we're talking 30 years ago. So 23, 85, I was in and out pretty quick jobs. But I didn't, hadn't discovered Joe Polish at that point and all his carpet cleaning stuff, but I was using the Jay Abraham stuff. So I would send thank you notes with a lottery ticket attached. Hey, thanks a million for using my carpet cleaning services. So in that type of business, once you've been in business for a year,

you can probably pretty much just rely on former customers if you do it right. And the nice thing about carpet cleaning is you have the address of your customer to begin with. You don't have to ask for it. Yeah, that makes sense. So how long did you do carpet cleaning? That was 91 to approximately 98. I was very good at getting into debt in the carpet cleaning business up here in the Northeast. It gets very cold, and I didn't like doing a lot of the work when it was really cold.

So I didn't do too much in the wintertime, but I would spend half of the next season getting out of debt. And I think in December of 96, I took a class on getting out of debt. It was through a local continuing organization around here. And I thought during this class, hey, I could teach a class like this. I like public speaking. I had a lot of interesting stories about being in debt and avoiding. your creditors. And so that night changed my life because I bought his $500 box of stuff. And the next January, I was teaching a local workshop in continuing edge programs throughout

New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. So I've had quite an interesting varied career. So were you still cleaning the carpets during the warmer months? Yeah, so absolutely, but very sporadically. And I cleaned my last carpet, I think, in 1998. I had some some good customers that I really enjoyed going to, and I stuck with them longer than I would have stuck with anybody else. But I was pretty much done completely in that business in 98. And then from January 97, for 17 years, I did the local classes. In 2002, I turned my workshop, my live workshop, into an e-book. In 2002, you started seeing the word e-book around.

So I developed a PDF on that, and I started selling it from my website. website and did that through 2020 or so. So then 2020 you made another major change in your life? Well, it's something I started maybe back in 2009. I was getting tired of just sitting behind my computer and I have all this marketing knowledge that I developed from Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham over the year specifically. And I just wanted to work with other businesses. I like working with small business owners who have a great product or service.

they just don't have the time and or energy or expertise to market it. So since 2009, I've been out there helping small businesses with their marketing and specifically their email marketing because, as I've heard you say on many of your podcasts, people, all these business owners should be building lists. And they think it's a revelation when you tell them. Yeah, that's the truth. I always say that's the number one thing. Do you have a list?

No. You know, how can you have a business and not have a list? Yeah, well, my favorite is I hate getting junk mail. I hate getting spam. Well, sir, or madam, these people are signing up for your list. They're asking to hear from you. You enjoy getting savings from your favorite businesses. And when you put it to them like that, unfortunately, a lot of business owners think when you talk

about email marketing, you think you're just getting a list of email addresses from the ether and just sending out junk. No, you're asking them to join your email. list. Yeah, and every one of them has an unsubscribe, so if they don't want it, no, no problem, just it's okay. I don't know, no sense. Exactly. But I know besides email, though, you like direct mail, and that's the very first time you and I met several years ago, and we're going to talk about that. So you had a goal one year to send lumpy mail out every single business day, if I recall. Is that, do I have that right?

That is correct. I called it my lumpy mail year. And that was the goal just to send a piece of lumpy mail every day. And I can't remember how far I made it. But I know I got too busy being a one-man band, so I wasn't able to get through the entire year. But I got on your radar somehow at that time. This was actually 2016. I'm looking at some old records here.

So it was back in January 1, 2016. probably January 2nd because you can't mail anything on the first. So yes, that was my lumpy mail year. That was a fun experiment. So who was on your list? Who were you sending this lumpy mail too? Well, primarily small business owners in the capital district of New York. So Albany County, Schenectady County, Rensler County, Saratoga County, Warren, and Washington.

If any of your listeners are familiar with upstate New York. Some people will say upstate is Buffalo and Syracuse, but that's actually up and to the left. Albany, the Capital District is upstate New York. So what was your offer to those businesses? What did you want them to do? Yeah, I actually wanted them just to get back in touch with me. I was selling email marketing and all sorts of things like that. And it looks like from the records that I can find, I got it to at least day 169.

So that's half the year, it looks like. and that was day 169, June 6th, so yeah, it looks like I got through half the year and just had to stop because I was, got too busy from all the results I was getting. So tell me about the results because I love results. Yeah, see, I know you do. And it's been so long. I don't remember any specific results. I mailed, you were nice enough when I got on your radar to send me a lot of nice things that I could use. I think you sent me some bank bags. I know there was some little Oscars that I could send, so I could send an award to somebody for winning the best ad that I ever saw or the worst ad I ever saw, you know, things like that.

I sent, I don't know if you've ever heard of the company that would send. It was a three sequence of three, and the first one was a postcard sized while you were out, pink notepad used to find in offices. Maybe you still do. And then their next one was eight and a half by 11, and the next one was 11 by 17, and I think maybe the fourth one was poster size while you were out.

So I did one of those on my own. I didn't go to the poster size, but I did the other three sizes, sending those type things. So unfortunately, I don't remember any specific examples of results other than, you know, I would get two or three a week, and I was doing mailings every day, every weekday during that time. Giant pink postcards, I'm looking at a picture of one. It looks like I sent a,

a picture of their map of where their business was, and I circled it and say, most of your customers come from in here. What are you doing to capture that information? So I was always trying to do something educational, not just, you know, I'm trying to sell you something. I would always try to be educational in my approach, just because I think that's the way to go. But it was a fun time, for sure. So you were growing your email marketing business because of that. So use direct mail to grow that business. Now, do you still have that business or did you transition even beyond that?

No, no, it's all the same. And actually my first lumpy mail, the first time I ever did something was back in the carpet cleaning business in the 90s, I sent a little plastic baggie of dirt attached to the letter to funeral homes because the funeral homes get a lot of foot traffic. and obviously they need carpet cleaning. I don't think I got anything from it. That's 30 years ago now. I don't remember being in any funeral homes.

But that was my first foray into Lumpy Mail was back in the 90s when I was sending little packets of dirt. And obviously I got that idea from Dan Kennedy or Jay Abraham who talked about, I think real estate agents were doing that to sell beachfront property. Okay. So now let's talk about today. Today you are in birthday marketing. I didn't realize that what you're doing is email marketing and birthday.

So tell me what is birthday marketing agency. What do you do? Sure. Well, this was back in 2019. Was it 2019? I did an experiment every, no, it was 2018. I did an experiment every month. And month three was going to be my networking months.

And typically I don't like networking. I don't like small talk. I'm a very shy person, introverted. I can't walk up to somebody and just start talking to them. So I knew that if I was going to do 30 networking events in 30 days, I needed to do something to stand out. And so I thought, well, I'm going to run into a lot of marketing people at these things. But I'm pretty certain that I'm not going to run into any birthday marketers. People with that as their tagline.

Sure enough, if you met me during that time, you think of me as the birthday got. because while I can do help with any kind of marketing, people have birthdays. I'm a birthday hook in their brain. So if I'm offering advice to anybody doing anything, if you're doing networking, have some hook that people can remember. So I just came up with the idea that I would be the birthday marketing guy and I would talk about how pretty much any business can benefit from birthday marketing. And since then, that's what I've focused on.

I think my joke is I run the nation's number one birthday marketing agency because can you name another one? And, of course, in the comments to this, we're going to get a bunch of them, but, you know, it works for me. Yeah, so tell me, okay. So now let's get into the specifics. What do you do for businesses and what's the results? Well, the perfect kind of business to do birthday marketing is obviously a food seller, a restaurant, a pizza shop. They can give away something very nice and easy for a birthday.

They can give away a free meal. That's what I recommend. don't cheap out and offer a free drink or a free dessert after a meal, offer a free meal for their birthday. If you sell lobster and you're afraid everybody's going to order the lobster, you can put a top dollar about on it, $10, $15, $20. Come on and spend $20 on your birthday at my restaurant. Nobody's going to die alone on their birthday.

They're going to bring one, two, three, four other people who are going to pay full price. And you have the opportunity to get them on your what I call birthday list. I call it a birthday list, not an email list. And that's the best way to build your list is with the birthday approach. Because you'll say, hey, join our email list. We'll send a coupons. Yeah, okay. Well, join our birthday list.

You'll get a free meal on your birthday and we'll send you special offers throughout the year. So that's the idea for restaurants and food sellers. It's easy to do. Now, there are other types of businesses. Really any business that has something small. that they could give away as a birthday gift. Like a florist could give away a free bouquet of flowers. It doesn't have to be roses.

It can be carnations or whatever. Ice cream shops, a three ice cream cone for your birthday. You know, there are all sorts of businesses that can do this, but don't just give it away to the person who walks in. You want to get them on your birthday list first. Join our birthday list, and then you can, on their birthday month, you can send out the happy birthday offer. And the second part of this is businesses who don't have that thing that they could give away.

An orthodontist can't give away free braces to everybody for their birthday, nor do they need them. But they could, orthodontists, a dentist, the doctor, a lawyer, chiropractor, they can all team up with businesses in the area. Restaurants, flower shops, ice cream shops, dry cleaners, any of those businesses that have something that they could give away. They should be teaming up with local businesses to offer birthday deal. So happy birthday from Dr. Joe. Go on into pizza pepperoni pizza palace and get a free slice and a Coke for your birthday. Now, Dr. Joe loves it because he's doing something nice for his patients. It's not costing him anything.

That's something that when I talk about this to doctors, they think, well, I can't pay for birthday gifts for all my patients. Well, you're not. You're teaming up with a business who sees the value in using this freebie, this freebie, birthday freebie as a foot in the door. There's an opportunity to get them on their list so that they can market to them to come back. So, you know, if you've got something you can give away, great, do it for birthdays, if not, team up with a business that can. So is this kind of like a rewards program for the restaurants?

It can be. Certainly. You know, and obviously there are plenty of solutions for that where they keep track of your points and if you use the credit card, they'll know the time you've been there and how often you come back. If you haven't been there in six months, it'll send out a thing. There's certainly that aspect of it. But in terms of businesses that don't have that thing to give away, it's really a nice

way to stand out. Thanks to Facebook, we're all accustomed to getting Facebook greetings. We're not accustomed to getting Facebook or birthday greetings from our doctor or dentist or lawyer. And when we do, they stand out. I'm going to remember if my chiropractor sent me a birthday offer from a local business. So I'm going to talk about my chiropractor to other people. I'm going to mention to the restaurant I'm here because Dr. Joe sent me my birthday present.

So it helps with word of mouth. It helps with client retention. If you haven't seen a patient in a while and you actually send them a birthday offer, they're going to, hey, I haven't been to see Dr. Joe in a while. I'm going to go over there. So there's a lot of good that can come from recognizing your patient's birthday. And even if they don't use the offer that you send to them, they don't go into pizza to get the pizza because they're gluten-free.

Hey, they still appreciate the effort. They remember you're there, and it's a nice treat. So does the offer go to them through an email or does the offer go to them in the mail? It can be either way. I work with a chiropractor. He likes postcards. So he gets the postcards and he sends them out to the patients every month. It's obviously an expense there.

If you haven't seen the power of birthday marketing, you might just want to send an email. And a nice thing about email is you could make four deals with four different businesses and send a birthday offer to your patients every week. Happy birthday from Dr. Joe in the first week of the month, go on and get a free car wash. Week number two, go on and get a free ice cream cone. So you could extend their birthday gifts throughout the month. Again, just solidifying the fact that you're a good person to do. business with and ramping up the word of mouth.

So I assume that, you know, Dr. Smith or whomever, the dentist, whatever, is the person who goes into the pizza place or the ice cream place and says, look, this is, I've got a list of a thousand patients and I want to send them a gift every year on their birthday. I'm going to send a postcard or I'm going to send them something every week by email. and so I'd like to partner with you to send these people into your business. Is that kind of how it goes? Yes, and I actually recommend for businesses to start with their customer list. Look at your customer list and see what they do.

You have a restaurant owner in your customer list. You have a pizza shop owner. So that makes the conversation a lot easier. If you already have a relationship with the person you might be partnering up with. but the way you've described will work as well. Now, it's going to take a smart business owner. You walk in and you say what you say, they're thinking, I just got to give away a bunch of free stuff to your patients.

What's in it for me? You know, so you have to, the approach would have to be more educational and probably done better in a direct mail, so they have a chance to just sit down and look at the proposal rather than just trying to walk in and interrupt their day, and they won't understand it. But yes, basically what you've described. I think start with your customer list.

Start with what do the spouses of your customers or patients do? You know, anytime you can shorten the distance between you and the relationship with the person you're dealing with, the better. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. Now, we started off this whole conversation talking about list, no. If the pizza place doesn't have a list or the ice cream place doesn't have a list. So what I've done is I've handed out coupons. So what's your point is? So I'm thinking through this in my brain.

So if I'm going to come and get an ice cream cone, I'm not coming by myself. I'm bringing my whole family. I'm bringing my grandkids. I'm, you know, whatever. That's the whole point. It is the point. And it's different for that kind of business because typically if I get a free birthday cone for my birthday, I probably am going by myself.

So the approach there is a little different because they don't, they're not going to get the immediate benefit of three other people buying ice cream cones, typically. I mean, if it's a kid, maybe. And that's another whole sidebar. If you're in a business that brings, you know, can do business with children, get a special birthday club for the kids. Just so, because obviously mom and dad, the kid doesn't have any money. So mom and dad are going to come.

They're going to have to bring all the siblings. So definitely start a special birthday club for kids if you can. But yes, the approach for a business where there's not going to be that three or four other people is you should be building your list. and this is a great way for you to build your list. You know, you've got somebody to come in. They've got a free ice cream cone, put them on the list. And I've got a great example of that that's happening today in my area.

We have two, Chick-fil-A has just come to our area. We had one in the Albany airport for a few years, but the first non-airport chick-fil-aes came to our area two or three weeks ago. And, of course, the hype was unbelievable. There were traffic jams everywhere, hundreds of people in line to get their Chick-fil-A. So a local philanthropist has gone to a couple places that sell chicken sandwiches and said, hey, I'll pay for the first pick a day and I'll pay for the first hundred chicken sandwiches that go out.

So now these businesses are saying, hey, Chick-Valaya is great, but we sell chicken sandwiches too, and we're going to give away 100 chicken sandwiches to our first 100 customers on this day. And this is happening today in Schenectady, New York. It's cake-2 cafe. It's a vegan cafe, I think. So they're giving away 100 vegan chicken sandwiches to the first 100 people that come in. And I don't know what a vegan chicken sandwich is.

But I could be wrong about that. It might be just regular chicken, but I think they're a vegan cafe. Anyway, I sent a message to them yesterday and I said, hey, this is going to be great. You're going to get 100 new customers. You can either have a fleeting great feeling of giving away 100 free sandwiches, or you can have the fleeting feeling of giving away 100 free sandwiches and an email list of 100 people. So I really suggested that they start an email list of these 100 people because they can invite them back. When you know how to get in touch, you can invite them back and you're not just hoping they come back.

So I sent the message. I don't know if the message was received in time, but I hope they're now they plan to collect the contact information of the people who are getting these 300 sandwiches because this is a golden opportunity. They're in a great mood. They're getting a free sandwich. Hey, I'll give you my name, my email, my birthday, my zip code. So that's just an example of how you benefit from giving something away. You build your own email list. They know other people.

They'll come back if you invite them back. So, Leo, what is it you do then? Do you coach these as a monthly coaching program or do they sign up for your email system? Tell me about what it is. I mean, what you're talking about is brilliant, but what do you do? I implement all this for them. You know, business owners don't have time to build. the list to compose the emails, to make an approach to the local businesses. You know, most

business owners know people. Hey, I know the guy who owns this. I know the guy who owns that. I know the guy. They just don't have time to go talk about this thing. But if I go and say, hey, Pete over Pete's Pepperoni Pizza Pisa Pall sent me over, he has a business idea for you. They're going to be receptive to that. So I call myself the marketing implementer. Unfortunately, somebody else got marketing implementer.com. So I can't use that. But, you know, I like to, I've always wanted to be that that person, the person who's implementing the good ideas. I can come up with plenty of good ideas, but I enjoy being the guy who implements them for you. Yeah, and you're very good at that. In fact, if I recall, you have some birthday cakes that you're going to be sending out here

pretty quick. Tell us about that. Unfortunately, I've now made that public, so it's sort of something I have to do now. For my own prospecting, my plan for August is to deliver 30 birthday cakes to business owners that I think I can help in my capital district. So I'm going to write, I'm going to do some research and find out the name of the owner. And I'm going to just go to my local grocery store for $11. I can get a cake and they'll write, happy birthday Tom, happy birthday Joe, happy birthday bill on it. And I'm going to have those delivered to 30 businesses in the area. Wow. Now will it be a one-time thing or will you then send something else? Sorry.

Well, yes, I have to figure out what to do next. I'm going to include a, I'm going to test, I'm going to do three different tests because I'm doing 10, I'm doing 30, so I can do three sets of 10 tests. I'm going to include just one pager that has a QR code where they can go and get more information about why they got a birthday cake on a day that probably wasn't their birthday. I'm going to, so I'll do 10 of those. I'll do 10 of the, I'll include actually a resume, and I call it a resume. It's not really a resume. It's just a sales pitch. But I tell people I want to get a job with them as their birthday club manager.

And, of course, I own birthday club manager.com. So if any restaurant owners or food sellers are listening, go to birthday club manager.com. But there's a little, I call it a resume of why I can help your business. I don't want a typical job. It's obviously just a service. But I think the approach is interesting when I say, I want to work for you. So that'll be my approach. I'll send a resume with what I can do for them.

So they don't have to go to a website and read. They can just read it right in front of them, what I think they'll appreciate. And I'm not sure what the third experiment with 10 birthday cakes is going to be. But for people listening, I don't know the birthdays of these people. I'm just, you know, if you get a birthday cake and I'd say that's not your birthday, it stands out. It's an experience. And it's experience for the people, the workers, I'm typically not giving it to the owner of the business. A worker is going to get it.

And the worker is going to be nervous now because they think they've forgotten the boss's birthday. So it creates a little tension there as well. Now, you hire somebody to deliver those? Or will you deliver them? I think I will. I mean, I couldn't do one a day. But in my experience doing lumpy mail, if I just do a bunch of it all at one time, good things happen. So I'm hoping that I can hire one or two people to deliver all the 30 cakes on one day, but I haven't gotten that far.

It won't be one a day. It'll be hopefully 30 and one day or 10 over 10 and three different days. I'm not sure how it all work out. Well, you know, calling yourself of the marketing implementer is spot on because so many, many people overthink something and you are really an action taker from the very beginning of when you met Jay Abraham. It's obvious. You know, people say, yeah, but Leo, it's too expensive.

I mean, look at the cakes. I mean, $11, I'm 30 and then you're going to hire somebody to, you know, deliver them. You know, I mean, they just, you know, if they even came up with the idea, I mean, you're extremely creative. Well, you know, it's just, there's a lot of people out there now who are talking about things like Lumpy Mail, and they're just an endless sea of ideas of things to try, and I just enjoy doing. If I was ambitious enough, I probably would have been a stand-up comedian just because I like making people laugh.

So this is the next best thing, sending them something goofy in the mail that hopefully makes them laugh and gets their attention, and when I follow up, you know, they remember me. I got to believe that with the kind of things that you send, you have an amazing response. I mean, you know, if you send out typical direct mail, not lumpy, not interesting, not great headline, typical. I mean, you would be thrilled to get a 1% response. Yours has got to be incredibly good. Well, yes. And it's, one of my favorites was I sent, there's a company out there called sendaball.com.

And they'll actually write your message on a ball and send it to people. And I did that years ago when I was looking for affiliates for my get out of debt program. And a guy was on vacation when it arrived. So it sat at the post office for a week or two. And he said that when people showed up, when the guy showed up to get his, mail, he said the people at the post office were disappointed because they had had fun throwing the ball around. You know, one of the things I've done is send live working cell phones to people.

And I got to believe it or not, about a 30% response to that. Only 30%. If I send 10, I'd hear from 30 people. But none of the people use the phone that I had sent to make the call. They had just, you know, they were nervous about using the phone. So you learn some things about human nature when you do stuff like this. But it's been fun. I'm not a great record keeper in terms of that.

I know my most successful ever was, this was December 24, 2004. I sent 49 FedEx packages to people that I thought would be good affiliates for my get-out-of-depth program. And I say 49, I sent 50, but one was a bad address, and it came back. And I think I didn't get 10 responses from that mailing, but my income in 2005 was six times what it was in 2004 because of that, you know, sending 49 packages. And that was a, you know, $1,000 investment. But it improved my income six times just by doing something different. You know, everybody wants affiliates, but they just send emails, hey, be my affiliate. I actually got in the mail and did it that way.

Do you have a particular fond way where you get a lot of your ideas? I mean, do they just come to you? Do you have a lot of reading? Well, where do you get these ideas? A lot of reading. There's an author named Stu Heineck. He's written a book called Get the Meeting. And he's a Wall Street Journal cartoonist.

And his approach is he actually will just make a personalized cartoon and send it to people. And he has a very high percentage rate of doing that. So once you follow Sue Heineck on LinkedIn, then you're going to find a bunch of Dale Dupree has a business called the sales rebellion and his thing is about crumpled mail he'll crumple up a letter you know you're familiar with this one sending a letter in a garbage can and say hey you've thrown away my last two letters you know I save you the step so he's got a little business that he started with just the crumpled mail and he's built it into a big thing now so someone you

might want to interview on your show there Stu Heineck and Dale Dupree So I get a lot of ideas from there. But back when I was doing the cell phone mailing, this was 2005 or six probably. I wasn't aware of anybody else doing it. I just knew that I could buy them for $10, and it would be impressive to get a live working cell phone in the mail. So I think I came up with that on my own, but the other ones I've just adapted and borrow it from other places. You know, talking about the crumple-level letter in a trash can. And actually I did, some of the most successful ones I've done, I actually crumpled that letter

and just put it in a number 10 envelope. And you can tell there's something different inside it. And it was part of a whole sequence and got huge response. So, yeah, you don't even have to spend the money on the trash can, although you can, and it's good. I've emailed a toilet paper roll, put it in a clear plastic bag and stuck the letter inside there. And so I always seeed my name, myself in that something. And so I sent it to my UPS box. And when I walk in, they said, you won't believe what you've got in the mail.

That's great. And anybody listening to this and wants to do the cell phone mailing, it'll be done. I don't know. Back then, the phones would come with 10 free minutes, which was perfect. That's all I needed. I haven't sent one in a while, and I think you have to buy a card. so it adds to the expense a little bit. But something that I didn't do that I should have,

if I sent a cell phone and I didn't get a response, two weeks later, I should have sent the plug and saying, hey, two weeks ago I sent your phone is probably dead by now. Here, plug it in and give me a call. That's something I didn't do, but something I would recommend that people do moving forward. You mean the plug into the electricity?

For the cell phone. Yeah, the cell phone had gone dead probably two weeks after not being used. So here, plug it back in and give me a call. Oh, that's clever. You know, one place I think is I'd like to go to the dollar store and just kind of wander around. Oh, yes, absolutely. Because I'll get ideas there. Tell me some stories, some success stories from your client base, those who have let you implement.

Tell me some stories. Well, that's just it with the birthday marketing thing is there's no great response. I mean, it's a because realize you're only mailing one-twelfth of your list every month. And you can test things. You know, you don't have, there's a business in this area. There's actually three different restaurants. Their offer is one free chicken wing for every year of your age. So if you're 50, you can go in and get up to 50 chicken wings.

So that's something you definitely want to bring other people. But they're very strict. It can only happen on your birthday. There is a big long list of things that you can't do and you can do. They're very strict about it, but they're not building an email list with it. They're just saying, hey, come in off the street. If you're 50 and you can prove it. You get up to 50 free wings.

They'll bring out 10 at a time to your table. They're not just going to plop 50 in front of you. You can't take them home. So there's a big long list. So there's not any big story of things that worked dramatically. It's just a nice thing that happens. Your list grows. In my experience, 30% of the people on your birthday club list will come in during that time.

So you're not going to go broke if you do it right. But it really adds to the word of mouth factor. I do this for a chiropractor. And he said he was dining at the restaurant where he said, since postcard gifts to, and he ran into one of his patients who was there using their birthday card. So, as I say, there's not that big thing. It's just a nice, even, you can test something every month and find the birthday offer that

works well for you and works well for the business. So there's not any of that dramatic thing in the birthday marketing space. It's just a nice, even keel, nice thing to do to stand out amongst your patients or your clientele. Well, I often say in marketing, there's need to be a reason why. Why are you doing it? Well, the reason why is it's your birthday. It's a perfect reason why.

Right. Hey, do you want to join our email list? Well, why? Well, we send you a coupon. You know, no, we want to send you a nice birthday gift. And when you send a birthday gift from your business, if you've been smart and you've teamed up with somebody else, the next week, you can send them a free piece of dry cleaning from the dry cleaner or a free ice cream cone, free flour, you know, that whole thing.

So you can do some nice things for them, but then during the year, during the rest of the year, you can send them special offers once you get them on your birthday club list. Wow. Well, I am looking at the clock and we are almost out of time, but I got one more question. Do you work only with local businesses or can you be the marketing implementer for businesses around the country? I can be the marketing implementer for businesses around the country, absolutely. So anybody listening to this might want to reach out to you.

Leo, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Well, if you're a food-related business, I would go to, let's see, birthdayclubmanager.com, birthday clubmanager.com. If you just want to talk about using birthdays in your business, you can go to birthdayprofitsystems.com, birthdayprofitsystems.com and give me your information there. and we can chat about how you can implement birthday marketing in your business. And I'm not a hard salesperson. You know, these days, everybody wants to get you on the phone to sell you the big high cost thing.

I just love talking about marketing in general and birthday marketing, specifically, as you can hopefully tell from my enthusiasm. So it's not going to be a hard sell. I'm going to tell you what you should do, and if you need me to help you do it, I can do that. And obviously, I can give you my phone number, 518. I'm in the upstate New York area near Saratoga and all. call me, 51828-28-8-8-8-7-11, 518-28-8-8-7-1-1, or Leo at birthdayprofit systems.com. Leo at birthday-profit systems.com.

And that phone number, you can text or call. Well, this is amazing. I was so excited because I love, love, love direct mail as well. And, of course, combining it with your email and makes a whole lot of sense. I remember Bill Glazer always saying it's not an either-or, it's a both-and. So you do both of them, not just one or the other. Right. So, Leo, thank you so much for being on today's show.

I appreciate it, and I'm sure everybody in listening will appreciate it as well. Well, Nina, I appreciate being here, and I'm going to tell you that I just bought themarketingimplementer.com. So this podcast cost me money, but that's okay. I don't know. Wow. That's called taking action. Exactly.

Well, marketing implementer was taken, but the marketing implementer was not. So in the future, people will be able to, I'm sure I'll put on a redirect right away to one of the birthday sites, but the marketing implementer.com belongs to me now. Thank you for that. Oh, yeah. Oh, you don't thank me. Thank you. You did it.

So until next time, this is Niner Hirschberger saying go out and figure out. how you can use birthday marketing in your business and reach out to Leo. Until next time. Thank you for listening to Megabucks Radio with Nina Hirshberger. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or to listen to past episodes, visit megabucksradio.com.